Anthony Watts

Willard Anthony Watts (Anthony Watts) is a blogger, weathercaster and a nonscientist climate change skeptic. Critics have described him as a politically-motivated college dropout with no climate credentials other than being a radio weather announcer. He runs the climate sceptic site wattsupwiththat.com.

Education
Watts attended Purdue University from 1975 to 1982. He dropped out of college without a degree. A direct query to the University revealed that he did not obtain a qualification from the university.

In the past, Watts has refused to say whether he graduated, and a number of direct queries to Watts to find out if he graduated from college were rebuffed.

Watts began his broadcasting career, in 1978 in Lafayette, Indiana. He still works as a weatherman at KPAY 1290 AM radio in Chico, California.

Political advocacy
Watts is involved with the Butte County Republican Party, providing technical assistance and maintaining the website and domain registration. ,

Credentials held
Watts held an American Meteorological Society Seal of Approval (a discontinued credential that does not require a bachelor's or higher degree in atmospheric science or meteorology from an accredited college/university) with a status of "retired".

Credentials not held
Some online lists incorrectly refer to Watts as "AMS Certified", but this is incorrect; the American Meteorological Society reserves its "AMS Certified" designation for its Certified Broadcast Meteorologists and Certified Consulting Meteorologists , and Watts posesses neither certification. ,

Op-Eds
In October 2010 the Christian Science Monitor published an op-ed by Watts likening climate contrarian Hal Lewis's resignation from the American Physical Society to Martin Luther. . The American Physical Society strenuously disagreed, saying "In light of the significant settled aspects of the science, APS totally rejects Dr. Lewis’ claim that global warming is a “scam” and a “pseudoscientific fraud.”", ,

"Leipzig Declaration"
Anthony Watts is listed as a signatory on the "Leipzig Declaration", which said "there does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide. In fact, most climate specialists now agree that actual observations from both weather satellites and balloon-borne radiosondes show no current warming whatsoever."

Speaking
Watts was a speaker at the International Conference on Climate Change (2009) organized by the Heartland Institute think tank. Watts is also listed as a speaker for the Heartland Institute's June 2009 Third International Conference on Climate Change.

Businesses
In 1987, Watts founded ItWorks, which "supplies custom weather stations, Internet servers, weather graphics content, and broadcast video equipment." ; it is also known as IntelliWeather.

Watts is listed as the Managing Member of ZEV2Go, seller of an NEV-type electric car.

Climate projects
In 2007, Watts founded SurfaceStations.org, to collect information on weather stations that are part of the United States Historical Climatological Network (USHCN) and Global Historical Climatological Network (GHCN). Watts believed that, with the information collected via the website, "we will be able to demonstrate that some of the global warming increase is not from CO2 but from localized changes in the temperature-measurement environment." , . But the results did not match Watts's expectations; a NOAA analysis of the Surface Stations data showed "no indication from this analysis that poor station exposure has imparted a bias in the U.S. temperature trends."

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Global warming skeptics
 * Heartland Institute
 * Leipzig Declaration
 * International Conference on Climate Change (2009)
 * SourceWatch:Project:Creating Articles on Sponsors and Speakers at The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change

External resources

 * WattsUpWithThat.com, Anthony Watts' personal blog, which often addresses climate change